At the Trade Deadline 31: I'm a Member of a Very Exclusive Club

At some point in the hazy past I joined Club PWE on the 2 by 3 Heroes blog. Basically you list your three favorite teams and sign up to receive a PWE (Plain White Envelope) full of cards whenever JediJeff feels like sending you one. You also agree not to complain if he includes some junk wax among your free cards. I have to admit that I don't read the 2 by 3 Heroes blog as often as I should because it is pretty much the only blog on my blogroll that is blocked by the filter at work. For whatever reason the software doesn't like his site. I've been making a point lately of looking at his blog after I get home, though, so that's an improvement, and I always like the comments he leaves on my posts and the posts of others around the blogosphere.

I'll get the junk wax out of the way right off the bat. This is a nice bit of 1987 Fleer and includes players from two teams I follow, the Oakland A's and the Seattle Mariners. Neither of these guys had amazing baseball careers. Rob Nelson made it into 76 games across five seasons for the A's and the Padres, and hung in the minor leagues for 11 years. Fireovid made it into 31 big-league games during six of the seasons from 1981 to 19992 and managed to hang around in the minors for a total of 16 seasons.

Tim Hudson has had a pretty long career and was an All-Star as recently as 2014. The cool thing about this PWE and similar trade packages is that I get to see cards from sets I've never seen before. I didn't really collect much baseball in the 90's when I was heavily into collecting basketball (although many of the basketball sets paralleled baseball designs from a given year) and I took a break from all sports card collecting from 2000-2013, so there are a lot of sets I haven't seen or at least haven't seen much of.

 That Travis Buck card has got quite the busy design. It's hard to look away from. I wonder what a binder of those cards would look like? With hair like that you'd think he was a pitcher. I wonder if the Warning Track collection is some kind of parallel set from Fleer Tradition? These are the questions that come up when you look at cards from an era that passed you by completely.

This is probably my favorite group of cards from this PWE. Randy Johnson is a Hall of Famer who I try to collect when I can. I don't often go out of my way to search out his cards, but I definitely like getting them. This is one I didn't have, so it's a win for me. LaTroy Hawkins is one of those old-man pitchers that seems to be popular just because they've played the game for so many years (see: Jamie Moyer). That's why I keep track of him. The dude has played for 11 different franchises and pulled in over $47 million in salary. Crazy stuff.

Thanks for the PWE, JediJeff! I always like getting cards in the mail. Even the junk wax is better than advertisements and bills, and this one wasn't even heavy on the junk wax.